just estimate of the extent and depth of
this movement. There are wide variations in the High Church party; the
extreme men are not the most numerous and certainly very far from the
ablest, and many influences other than convinced belief have tended to
strengthen the party. It has been, indeed, unlike the Tractarian party
which preceded it, remarkably destitute of literary or theological
ability, and has added singularly little to the large and noble
theological literature of the English Church. The mere charm of novelty,
which is always especially powerful in the field of religion, draws many
to the ritualistic channel, and thousands who care very little for
ritualistic doctrines are attracted by the music, the pageantry, the
pictorial beauty of the ritualistic services. AEsthetic tastes have of
late years greatly increased in England, and the closing of places of
amusement on Sunday probably strengthens the craving for more attractive
services. The extreme High Church party has chiefly fostered and chiefly
benefited by this desire, but it has extended much more widely. It has
touched even puritanical and non-episcopal bodies, and it is sometimes
combined with extremely latitudinarian opinions. There is, indeed, a
type of mind which finds in such services a happy anodyne for
half-suppressed doubt. Petitions which in their poignant humiliation and
profound emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the
worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and
creeds which when plainly read shock the understanding and the
conscience are readily accepted as parts of a musical performance.
Scepticism as well as belief sometimes fills churches. Large classes who
have no wish to cut themselves off from religious services have lost all
interest in the theological distinctions which once were deemed
supremely important and all strong belief in great parts of dogmatic
systems, and such men naturally prefer services which by music and
ornament gratify their tastes and exercise a soothing or stimulating
influence over the imagination.

The extreme High Church party has, however, other elements of
attraction. Much of its power is due to the new springs of real
spiritual life and the new forms of real usefulness and charity that
grew out of its highly developed sacerdotal system and out of the
semi-monastic confraternities which at once foster and encourage and
organise an active zeal. The power of the par